The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Tuesday, June 4, 2002, Chandigarh, India

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Six Pak soldiers killed
Guns continue to roar along border
Tribune News Service

A BSF jawan maintains vigil at the border with Pakistan in Jammu sector on Sunday night. — PTI photo

Jammu, June 3
Artillery and mortar guns continued to roar on the LoC and exchange of small arms fire and mortar shelling on the International Border (IB) in the Jammu sector remained a usual feature of the border scene today.

Defence Ministry sources said the Indian troops retaliated effectively and caused a heavy damage to the enemy troops across Batalik, Dras and Kargil following the pounding of several Indian villages in the Kargil sector by the Pakistani forces. The sources said there was no casualty “on our side.”

The Pakistani troops again resorted to heavy mortar shelling and firing in the Poonch, Nowshehra and Akhnoor sectors. In the R.S. Pora, Arinia, Ramgarh sectors, there was an exchange of heavy small arms fire. In the Hiranagar area, huge stocks of wheat and other crops were set ablaze when several mortar shells exploded.

The Indian troops returned the fire and damaged several Pakistani bunkers.

Sources said six Pakistani soldiers were killed in the Indian retaliatory fire across IB and several army camps damaged.

Reports from across the border said the forces withdrawn from the Afghan border were mostly deployed across Poonch and Rajouri, indicating that in case of war, the Pakistani authorities would select Jammu as the thrust area.

The Pakistani troops have evacuated more than 200 villages across the Poonch, Rajouri, Akhnoor, R.S. Pora and Samba sectors. The border villagers have been taken into camps more than 10 km away from the LoC. The Pakistan army, according to these reports, has launched a massive recruitment drive and able-bodied from the migrant camps are being enrolled for arms training and others engaged as helpers and porters.

Meanwhile, the Jammu police has achieved a major success in foiling the Pakistan gameplan of carrying out explosions in vital police and government installations by arresting a militant, Mohammed Arshad, from the city of temples.

BARAMULA (UNI): A Doordarshan stringer was injured while a woman correspondent escaped unhurt when Pakistani troops resorted to unprovoked and indiscriminate shelling in the northern sector of Kupwara.

Jaish commander killed, houses burnt in valley

Srinagar, June 3
A Pakistan-based commander of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad was among four persons killed while militants set afire 13 houses in the Kashmir valley during the past 24 hours.

A BSF spokesman said that troops sealed Panju village late last night acting on specific information that some top JeM militants were hiding there.

However, early this morning, when troops of 120 and 138 battalions tried to storm the hideout, they came under heavy fire from the militants. They retaliated and in the ensuing gunfight, self-styled district commander of the JeM Riyaz Ahmad Siddiqi, alias Abdullah Bhai, a resident of Pakistan, was killed.

The slain militant, carrying a reward of Rs 2 lakh on his head, was also the commander of the JeM suicide squad, the spokesman added.

Panic gripped the busy Hari Singh Street area near here this evening after unidentified gunmen shot dead a police constable.

Official sources said the militants fired upon Constable Mushtaq Ahmad of Shergri police station from point blank range near the Hanuman Mandir at the historic Hari Singh High street. The victim died on the spot.

Meanwhile, security forces also gunned down two Lashker-e-Toiba militants in an encounter at Chitta Panja last night.

At Dareja, militants shot dead Suriya Begum, a peon in the Public Works Department, late last night, he added. Militants set on fire 13 houses at Damankote and Palla in Udhampur district late last night, the spokesman said. UNI

UN staff families leave India

A French national—United Nations staff member (R)—receives a ticket from its help desk in Islamabad on Monday. Foreign nationals began evacuating Pakistan over the mounting fear of war between India and Pakistan. — Reuters photo

Islamabad, June 3
The dramatic pull-out of families of UN personnel and withdrawal of foreigners from India and Pakistan is part of the international community’s efforts to put “concerted pressure” on the two countries, a high-placed diplomatic source said.

“There is concerted pressure,” the diplomat told AFP on Sunday after a wave of Western nations announced at the weekend they were telling their citizens to get out of India, just a few days after similar warnings over Pakistan. “To a certain extent we have been taken hostage by the decision of the Secretary General (Kofi Annan), probably under the influence of the USA and Great Britain,” a UN employee said. But the reason given for leaving India, which is home to tens of thousands of Western expatriates, is the tense border situation with Pakistan and the risk of war breaking out between the two nuclear-armed powers. AFP